Toil and Trouble
by kototyph
Summary: "You told me Halloween was about candy and playing tricks on people," Castiel accuses. "You said children dress up and people carve pumpkins to scare away the goblins. You said nothing about gratuitous nudity, or spin the bottle, or 'jello shots'—"


**Toil and Trouble  
» Fandom: **Supernatural  
**» Rating: **PG  
**» Pairing: **Sam/Castiel  
**» Additional tags/warnings:**  
**» Summary: **For Sassy Week II, over on tumblr. | "You told me Halloween was about candy and playing tricks on people," Castiel accuses. "You said children dress up and people carve pumpkins to scare away the goblins. You said nothing about gratuitous nudity, or spin the bottle, or 'jello shots'—"

* * *

"I'm sorry, Sam," Castiel says, after they've been walking for a while.

"Out of morbid curiosity," Sam drawls, kicking at a stone on the sidewalk, "exactly which part of what just happened are you apologizing for?"

Around them, the streets of Palo Alto are dark and cold, but not empty: plenty of people are still out and about in their costumes, looking for treats of an altogether different sort in the bars and clubs that dot this part of town. Castiel fidgets with his own costume, tugging at the cassock sleeves to try and pull them down over his freezing fingers. "... most of it."

Sam makes a soft, incredulous noise. "Most of it?"

"The parts for which I am sorry, I am very, very sorry," Castiel assures him. "I'm sorry for drinking so much. And singing. And breaking the table. And for talking to that girl about her father. And for vomiting on your friend—"

Castiel stops there (the list goes on to include more broken things, general belligerence and eventually getting them kicked out of the party), because Sam is laughing, helpless wheezing chuckles fogging spectacularly in the night air.

"Sam," Castiel chides. "I'm being sincere. I truly am sorry, for those parts."

"Yeah?" Sam gasps, in between laughs. "Then what about Brady? You knocked the dude unconscious!"

"I did not!" Castiel had, in fact, done his very best to exorcise the literal hell out of the 'dude'. As a result of that expended energy, the several quarts of alcohol he had consumed to no effect throughout the evening had made themselves suddenly and violently known as the toxic chemicals they were, after which followed the vomiting, and after _that_ their banishment from the premises... "I maintain he tripped and fell."

"Bullshit."

"Sam—"

"Bull_shit,_ Cas. What do you have against him, anyway?"

"He is not a nice person," Castiel says grumpily. He's tired, a little damp from spilled beer, and _cold_. He hatesbeing cold. "You shouldn't be friends with people like him."

"He's a nice guy! Cas, I swear, they're all nice guys. And girls. They were just... well. Drunk, to start with. Probably high, too."

"You told me Halloween was about candy and playing tricks on people," Castiel accuses. "You said children dress up and people carve pumpkins to scare away the goblins. You said nothing about gratuitous nudity, or spin the bottle, or 'jello shots'—"

"_Cas."_ Sam sighs gustily, and tips his head up to the chill October moonlight. The green and black paint smeared haphazardly over his face looks positively ghoulish, which Castiel gathers is the point. "Now I feel like I should be the one apologizing. That really wasn't your scene, was it?"

Castiel supposes that his 'scene', in this sense of the vernacular, would be the Choir and his garrison. A rundown old house filled with intoxicated college students in various states of undress is the furthest thing from his scene.

They're passing a streetlight, and the cold orange glow momentarily illuminates Sam's expression: a kind of resigned, annoyed affection.

"I'm sorry," Castiel repeats meekly, but he knows he's been forgiven.

"Whatever, man," Sam says, and throws an arm around Castiel's shoulders. "I admit, Brady probably deserved it. He's been kind of a dick lately."

Sam is _warm_, and Castiel wastes no time pressing himself into Sam's side and tucking his hands into Sam's pocket, his face into Sam's shoulder. Sam stumbles a little before he finds his balance again; at one point in the evening he'd been matching Castiel drink for drink, so it's something of a minor miracle that he's able to walk at all.

It's another block of walking like three-legged-race entrants before Sam says, "Still, did you have to throw up on Jessica Moore? Of all people, Cas. Brady was gonna set me up."

"Hmph," Castiel says, eyes closed and face buried in the rough wool of Sam's coat. "You might get another chance."

Sam snorts. "Pretty sure that ship has sailed. Who wants to date someone who reminds you of getting puked on?"

"Is that a rhetorical question?" Sometimes they're not, and he still has problems telling them from regular questions.

Sam, always a boy with unquenchable curiosity, answers with genuine interest. "Why, do you have an answer?"

They wobble down the sidewalk and discuss strange fetishes until they reach Sam's tiny studio, where they tumble into the unmade bed fully clothed and Sam slurs, "At this point Dean usually says 'No homo.'"

"What does that mean?" Castiel asks, wiggling in closer to Sam's body and luxuriating in the heat.

"Look it up, 'm about to pass out," Sam groans, and does just that.

Castiel means to get up and query the wise Googlian scribes, he really does. Instead, he falls asleep just like that, an arm thrown over Sam's waist and his forehead pressed to the hollow of Sam's throat. In the morning, when Sam is bent over the toilet bowl and Castiel is left squinting at the half-closed bathroom door, he can't remember what it was. He decides it couldn't have been too important.

* * *

**A/N:**

This verse, which I call "Sam and Cas are College Bros!" because I'm neither very original nor creative, has companion pieces over on tumblr (my tumblr url [on my author page] + post/25278625443/snippets-college-au-thanksgiving-sastiel).


End file.
